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I can already imagine how many times someone will lose their phone, then remotely break it only to find it later and hassle customer service to fix it.

Putting that aside, I just can't see this kind of security being useful or reducing actual thefts very much. I can't imagine there won't be a way to disable, remove, or otherwise bypass this remote wipe in some way.

I don't think the length of copyright impedes creativity at all. Once something is in the public domain it's free to use in whole unchanged. Where's the creativity in that?

It's overly restrictive fair use rules that impede creativity. Allow a copyright holder to own their property perpetually should be fine, but loosen fair use laws so that things can be used and built upon.

Then it appears you disagree with some other Slashdot users who have told me that smartphones are a luxury, not a necessity. The only necessity is an $80/year dumbphone in case of urgencies, and that's only because payphones are being removed. But I'm willing to consider your arguments as to why a smartphone is a necessity.

There was no usage of the words necessity or luxury in the post you were replying to. Something being "the norm" or not isn't related to whether or not it is deemed a necessity.

An anonymous reader writes "Today marks the inaugural 'Take Your Computer to Work Day'. First conceived by security researchers Michael Gough and Ian Robertson (the Thoughtful Hackers), this day has exploded in popularity and has now become a world-wide phenomenon. Says Mr. Robertson of its introduction, 'We always hear stories of how much productivity people gain by using their own mobile phones and tablets at work – by some studies, as much as 110%. We thought, wow, that is so smart and has absolutely no downsides. The next logical extension of that is to offer all our workers to bring in any of their computers, so we did.' 'The results were absolutely astonishing', said Mr. Gough. 'We were seeing user productivity up at least 0.5 times with Commodore 64's alone. Our database searches got faster with home-built white-box servers, and our janitorial staff was able to clean the restrooms twice as fast thanks to their TRS-80's.'"

ICANN posted its proposal for expanding gTLDs late in October, and now the US government has issued its scathing response (PDF, 11 pp., linked from there), from the departments of Commerce and Justice. The initial criticism is that John Levine sent a note to a policy mailing list and summarized the concerns raised as ranging from "...insufficient attention to monopoly and consumer protection, to lack of capacity to enforce compliance, to overreach into non-technical areas such as adjudication of morality, to what they'll do with all the extra money since they are a non-profit. Their first concern is that in 2006 the ICANN board said they would commission a study on economic issues in TLD registrations such as whether different TLDs are different markets, substitutability between TLDs, and registry market power, issues which are fairly important in any new TLD process. Here it is two years later, they're rushing to set up the new TLD process, but there's no study. 'ICANN needs to complete this economic study and the results should be considered by the community before new gTLDs are introduced.'"

conner_bw writes "In a world first, a research group in Kyoto Japan has succeeded in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain. Here's the Japanese press release for good measure. One step closer to broadcasting your dreams? The research is due to be published today in the US scientific journal Neuron."

Zonk points out some big news for fans of the Everquest games; Sony Online Entertainment has rolled out a system which allows the exchange of real money for items used in the game. Sony is making use of a transaction system called Station Cash which charges your credit card in exchange for a virtual currency which is then spendable on the items. Massively has a walkthrough of how it will work, and shows some of the items up for sale, including vanity armor, non-combat pets, and potions that make various aspects of your character better. "Each of these types of flasks comes in a tier. Tier I flasks increase XP by 10% and cost $1.00. Tier II flasks increase XP by 25% and cost $5.00. Tier III flasks increase XP by 50%, and cost $10.00 each. All flask tiers last for 4 hours on use, and more than one can't be used at a time." Further details on the system are available in the FAQ and the Terms of Service. This comes alongside news today that upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will not be subscription-based, but entirely based on micro-transactions instead.

Wolfger writes "Continuing the recent(useful)stupidtheme: I've recently become a BlackBerry user, and I'm in love with the obvious(?) tricks, such as installing MidpSSH to access my home box remotely. But I'd like to know what more experienced Crackberry addicts can share."

An anonymous reader writes "API Lead at Twitter, Alex Payne, writes today that the Internet was 'built wrong,' and continues to be accepted as an inferior system, due to a software engineering philosophy called Worse Is Better. 'We now know, for example, that IPv4 won't scale to the projected size of the future Internet. We know too that near-universal deployment of technologies with inadequate security and trust models, like SMTP, can mean millions if not billions lost to electronic crime, defensive measures, and reduced productivity,' says Payne, who calls for a 'content-centric approach to networking.' Payne doesn't mention, however, that his own system, Twitter, was built wrong and is consistently down."